


this hour.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Heaven, M/M, sentimental drivel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-16 21:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2285448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this hour.

Castiel remembers this hour.  He remembers it as the longest hour in his life.  He sits and waits and knows in his heart of hearts that no one is coming.  Then he forgets again; heaven is like that, sometimes.  

Castiel keeps waiting, he forgets why.  He sits on a bench with his hands pressing down on his knees, gripping tight.  He tries to remember what he’s forgetting.  He’s waiting for someone.  So is everyone else.  He is looking over an ocean of faces and he doesn’t see anyone he knows.  He doesn’t know who he is looking for. All he sees are clusters of families, families crowding against the walls, families halting in the middle of the room, blocking traffic just to be able to hug each other.  

This is my hour, he remembers, this moment is his best-kept secret.  There is something wonderful about this hour, he thinks, though it doesn’t seem like it now, with only twelve dollar bills in his back pocket and his cell phone slowly losing its charge.  There is something wonderful about this, something good enough to make him want to come back.  He waits and waits.  He tells himself, Something wonderful.

—

Families pass in front of him: mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, in every combination imaginable.  He watches an aunt pick her nephew up off the ground and hold him against her shoulder.  He watches grandfathers waiting with gift-wrapped presents, boxes filled with wonderful things.

A small family passes by him, a mother and her daughter, rubbing her tiny feet against the footrest of the stroller until her shoe falls off.  He picks up a baby’s shoe off the floor and hands it to her mother.  

“Are you waiting on someone?” she asks.  

He’s remembering again, in bits and pieces.  “Yes,” he says, and when he looks up instead of seeing a ceiling of rusting metal and fluorescent lights, he sees a sky filled with an endless span of stars.  Something wonderful, he thinks.  Surely this wait will be worth it.  He wouldn’t be waiting in this memory if it wasn’t.  He says, “Two brothers.”

—

He starts walking as fast as he can through the crowd. He feels like running, but he doesn’t dare.  But then he doesn’t have to, because Sam and Dean are running towards him instead.

Sam reaches him first, with open arms, and then Castiel is being pulled into them.  It hurts him and he doesn’t understand at all, because he can’t stop smiling, smiling at Sam when he lets Castiel go, smiling at Dean when Dean finally reaches him and holds him too.

“We’re here,” Sam is saying, and he’s smiling too, turning a smile as golden-warm and bright as the sun right back as Castiel, “we found you.”

“I thought,” he says.  His throat hurts like he wants to cry, but there are no tears in his eyes and for the first time he thinks heaven might be worth it, after all, worth the fear that had come with dying, worth the feeling of blood soaking through his hands.  ”I thought you might not come.”

“Cas,” Dean says.  “Cas, we looked everywhere for you.”

“I’m so glad to see you,” Castiel tells him.  He feels lightheaded with happiness, with profound relief.   “We’re together,” he observes: the sky is blue, the grass is green, of course they would find each other again, these brothers and Castiel.  He closes his eyes, he’s thinking, is this it? is this what I’ve been waiting for?  was it worth it, after all?  “You’re really here.”

“Of course we are,” Sam says, “why wouldn’t we be?” but Dean must see how he is cracking underneath all his joy, because he slides his hand onto the back of Castiel’s neck and crushes Castiel’s head into his shoulder. Dean holds him there for a long moment, holds Castiel’s face against the warm soft skin of his neck and the rough stubble on his cheek that catches on Castiel’s hair.  

"We’re here," Dean says, and even when Dean lets him pull away, he doesn’t drop his arms.  Instead he keeps his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, and Sam picks up his bags.  They are walking beside him through the airport, these two brothers, and Castiel can’t stop smiling.  He thinks they must look just like any other family here.  Just the same as every other family he’s ever seen, only this one is his own.  

“Lets get out of here,” Dean says, and Castiel says, “You’re really here.  Just for me.”  

“Yeah,” Dean is saying, right now, in this hour, and he sounds like he means it.  This must be what Castiel has waited for.  “We’re going home.”

—

He must be remembering again, because there they are, standing dazed and haloed by the glare of the florescent lights, waiting for him.  Waving at their arms at him.  Just like all the other families he has seen.  Just like they are a family and he is part of it.  This is the hour he will spend eternity in, shifting backwards and forwards from the long heavy moments sitting alone in the crowd to this one second where two brothers wave at him like he belongs with them.


End file.
